Loading ...Eoghan McCabe, a web designer/developer in Dublin, Ireland, and the brains behind FoldSpy (a very clever idea for an analytics tool), recently made a couple of interesting posts on good old search engine optimisation;
Paying for SEO services from an SEO consultant will generally get you what you want: higher, relevant ranking in popular search engines. But the majority of what SEO delivers is just best practices. After that, there remains search-engine specific tricks and link-building strategies.
Although I wouldn’t quite take the hardline that Eoghan has in the rest of his posts; in 2008, SEO really does just feel like best practices, not the one-stop-shop for taking your fair share of Internet traffic that it was years gone by.
Being the un-cool Web fanatic that I am, I’m often quizzed about SEO by friends, family, and contacts. But being a social networking, blogging, discussion forum focused Web fanatic (with very little traditional SEO expertise whatsoever), I tell them not to worry about SEO, and that keeping a site’s content semantically structured (a.k.a properly coded with h1s, h2s, CSS for styling, etc) as a base guideline, and fresh and compelling above and beyond that guideline, is far more important than condensing keywords into a welcome page. A news/blog/discussion area, or at least some kind of CMS (content management system), should be considered as a means of regularly publishing more of your clean, well-structured data.
Unfortunately, many people still look at SEO as the implement with which to take a once-off stab at getting a website right (or at least until the next web consultancy comes in for another complete makeover), and that the keyword ratio will work the traffic-magic until the next re-branding. By taking this approach, you’re just creating a static site with contrived copy, not a site which gives people a reason to visit time and time again.
Above all else, focusing on SEO promotes the wrong mindset for website owners. Websites need to evolve, they can’t be built and left to do their job on their own, no matter how many keywords you fit in a three-hundred word paragraph after the Flash intro video (not so good). Everyday you’re writing pitches, proposals, newsletters, press-releases, job ads, marketing campaigns, and sending them all through the email silo. Find a way to keep these resources flowing through your website too, and make sure your have the infrastructure in place to make this a quick, painless process.
In short, I agree with you that the most important thing to do is to focus on the content and making your site great. SEO is a distraction unless you’ve got someone that really knows what they’re doing, and even at that, it’s bullshit because of how it damages the web and fills it with crap.
Thanks for the mention, Neil.
I’ve never worked with an SEO pro - as far as I’m aware I’ve never even met one in person - so I can’t comment on working alongside them from a designer/developer/site owner perspective. But from working with mainstream SEO tools as a basic spec for any project, and seeing the effects a well structured blog post has on search engine rankings and real human being interactivity (i.e. people taking the time to leave a comment on your site!), I know that focusing on discussion and fresh content has to be a priority for any site owner.
SEO .The factor which irritates lazy people
. i tried building backlinks from everywhere. it is difficult but when it gets to work then it doesnt stop easily 
Eoghan McCabe is the last person I’d listen to when it comes to SEO, after all he is guilty of manipulating search results by using his own client sites. Eoghan like to share with everyone how you played around with your footer tag on your client sites using different keywords?
Its all good concentrating on lovely coded pages and perfectly written content but happens when you have a site such as a hotel site? You honestly think your visitor orientated content is what will get you to the top?
Gavin, care to explain what the hell you’re talking about?
I’ve stated loud and clear from the start: I used to do SEO. But my using it was a mistake. I’ve learned and moved on. Now it’s your turn.